arched eyebrows were raised a little.

"Why do you invariably insist on the class distinction?" she cried. "I have always been taught that in England the barrier of rank is being broken down more and more every day. Your society is the easiest in the world to enter. You tolerate people in the highest circles who would certainly suffer from cold feet if they showed up too prominently in New York or Philadelphia; isn't it rather out of fashion to be so exclusive?"

"Our aristocracy has such an assured position that it can afford to unbend," quoted the other.

"Oh, is that it? I heard my father say the other day that it has often made him tired to see the way in which some of your titled nonentities grovel before a Lithuanian Jew who is a power on the Rand. But unbending is a different thing to groveling, perhaps?"

Mrs. Devar sighed, yet she gave a moment's scrutiny to a wine-list brought by the head waiter.

"A small bottle of 61, please," she said in an undertone.

Then she sighed again, deprecating the Vanrenen directness.

"Unfortunately, my dear, few of our set can avoid altogether the worship of the golden calf."

Cynthia thrust an obstinate chin into the argument.

"People will do things for bread and butter that they would shy at if independent," she said. "I can understand the calf proposition much more easily than the snobbishness that would forbid a gentleman like Fitzroy from eating a meal in the same apartment as his employers, simply because he earns money by driving an automobile."

In her earnestness, Cynthia had gone just a little beyond the bounds of fair comment, and Mrs. Devar was quick to seize the advantage thus offered.

"From some points of view, Fitzroy and I are in the same boat," she said quietly. "Still, I cannot agree that it is snobbish to regard a groom or a coachman as a social inferior. I have been told that there are several broken-down gentlemen driving omnibuses in London, but that is no reason why one should ask one of them to dinner, even though his taste in wine might be beyond dispute."Cynthia had already regretted her impulsive outburst. Her vein of romance was imbedded in a rock of good sense, and she took the implied reproof penitently. "I am afraid my sympathies rather ran away with my manners," she said. 

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